Discussion

Need alternative to Lea and Perrins or sauce w/out HFCS

just picked up a bottle of Lea and Perrins Worcestershire at Whole Foods only to discover HFCS is the 2nd ingredient! perhaps i wouldn't mind if it was the last ingredient but 2nd must mean there's quite a lot of it in there. is there an alternative? i use a 1/3-1/2 cup in my meat loaf and that's also quite a lot. thanks!

My bottle of L&P lists HFCS as third, after molasses. Admittedly it is several years old, so proportions may have changed. In a 5g serving, 1g is sugar(s)

1/2c of Worcestershire sounds like a lot - is that the primary source of salt and flavor in the meat loaf? How many pounds of meat? There are plenty of meatloaf recipes that don't use any Worcestershire (or even ketchup).

If you want to get Worcestershire like flavors from scratch you need something tart (vinegar, tamarind paste), something sweet (molasses or other sugary poison), something savory and salty (anchovies, fish sauce, soy sauce).

My bottle of L&P lists HFCS as third, after molasses. Admittedly it is several years old, so proportions may have changed. In a 5g serving, 1g is sugar(s)~~~~~~~~~~Then my bottle must be truly ancient, it lists "corn sweeteners", the fourth ingredient, after water, vinegar and molasses.

Not the same thing but I use Maggi sauce and Worcestershire sauce interchangeably. It taste like a blend of soy sauce & beef bullion and is great for boosting meaty flavors. Can be found in Asian markets in the soy sauce aisle.

"""But even with all the ingredients there is no guarantee you would be able to make the sauce as what makes it distinctive is the way it is made, which is still a secret.'Two years ago, Worcestershire Sauce topped a poll of British ingredients that have had the biggest impact on the food industry.The chef Marco Pierre White claims the sauce allows him to create 'the most delicious sauce in the world to serve with beef'.

the original includes cloves, lemon essence, peppers & pickles, too. interesting. the original recipe does not include onions or garlic. (plus, would an olde english company use garlic, the stuff that the frenchies adore?! ;-).

cloves are one of those long-used but rarely thought-about ingredients in so many things.

We love it - as smartie points out, it's been grown here for nearly 2000 years and has often featured in our cuisine. Not so much in traditional northern dishes as it is not to easy to grow in our harsher climate - I think it struggles in areas where it's too cold for grapes (our most northerly commercial vineyards are in the English midland counties).

Certainly Hannah Glasse's book from 1747 includes garlic in recipes. And it's use is bound to have been further popularised after the French Revolution when many chefs (and their employers) escaped to Britain.

French's Worcestershire, available in most grocery stores, does not have HFCS. I switched a while ago and find it completely indistinguishable from Lea & Perrin's. It has the added advantages of coming in a more user friendly bottle, and being less expensive (at least where I shop)>.

So HFCS is corn syrup on steroids, so to speak, but why is it worse than other sugars?"High-fructose corn syrup is created when corn syrup undergoes enzymatic processing that produces a sweeter compound containing higher levels of fructose."

The specific enzyme which converts glucose to fructose is xylose isomerase (also known as glucose isomerase). It is very expensive to produce so in the industrial process it remains fixed to a solid substrate and the glucose syrup passes over it; in other words it is transferred to the final product.

Other enzymes which are used earlier in the process to convert cornstarch to glucose are simply mixed into the liquid, but these are the same enzymes used in producing simple corn syrup (glucose only syrup). Further, all of these products under some degree of purification after conversion; any remaining enzymatic activity would be miniscule at best.

Do you mean "not transferred" to the final product?"While inexpensive alpha-amylase and glucoamylase are added directly to the slurry and used only once, the more costly xylose-isomerase is packed into columns and the sugar mixture is then passed over it, allowing it to be used repeatedly until it loses its activity."